WELCOME

There's a whole new set of challenges, of course, that

Aug. 6, 2017 by Catherine Pope

There's a whole new set of challenges, of course, that can arise from the complexity of this whole project. For instance, what do we do with some of the planet’s most powerful natural gas reservoirs (for now though it's not quite enough yet)? What about some of the world’s most abundant natural gas (for now though it's not quite enough yet)? Are we simply going to let the world continue warming with no real progress?

This is where things get tricky. As Smith notes, we really need to begin thinking about what we're going to do with our money and the resources to do so.

What we can do, is create a model that looks at the most powerful natural gas reservoirs, and see what we can do to reduce emissions.

The model takes the world down this road. It takes carbon off of the ground, and then we set out to increase emissions, or make it possible to do both. To do both we need to get all the existing fossil fuel infrastructure in place, and then we just need to put a little bit more carbon into the atmosphere. That is, we need to get our money out of the coffers of fossil fuel companies, and we need a large step in the right direction. For the first time, we have a new way of thinking about climate change, and we're starting to see where the problems lies.

Smith suggests that we could make these models work very well for a simple and inexpensive way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But it's not a simple and cheap way. If we just get rid of all fossil fuel infrastructure in the world, and we're not even able to cut emissions, we lose the chance to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the future. For that to happen, we need to start thinking about climate change policy.

One way we could do that is by considering the future trajectories of the current global warming scenario, with some of the most powerful natural gas reservoirs (for now though it was not quite enough yet), and some of the most abundant natural gas (for now although it's not quite enough yet).